A Hard, Cruel Shore Page 6

  He ticked off the need for a stout sea-chest with strong hasps and locks, and spare keys; borrowing back and forth among Mids was one thing, but it’s better to be asked. He mentioned the need for thicker dark blue wool trousers for cold weather and undress, along with the necessity of a grogram watch-coat, mittens, and a couple of mufflers. Hats, well … Charlie might need but one cocked hat for inspection and Sunday Divisions, but a short, curl-brim top-hat would come in handy, as would a wide-brimmed straw hat for hot weather in the tropics, but he could get one of those in a foreign port.

  “Several linen shirts, black neck-stocks, perhaps just the one silk shirt,” Lewrie told them as the Reverend Chenery scribbled away, “again, that’s for Sunday Divisions, or formal occasions when away from the ship t’make a good impression. Silk stockings, too, though cotton ones are more useful. And, once aboard, the Ship’s Purser will have slop-trousers, which you’ll wear more often than breeches.”

  “Will I need weapons, sir?” Charlie asked, looking hopeful.

  “If it comes to action, the Navy sees to that, young sir. Cutlasses, boarding axes, Sea Pattern pistols,” Lewrie said to the lad’s disappointment. “You’ll need a dirk, only as a mark of distinction. Any sword shop, or a chandler’s, will have them, and you can usually find a good, used one at a fair price. Again, there’s no call for anything too showy, just … sharp and serviceable.”

  Books? Lewrie recommended the latest edition of Falconer’s Marine Dictionary, his old steward, Aspinall’s, book of knots, which he would have to learn to tie by heart, and quickly, along with something on rigging, both standing and running, and more on the use of a sextant, and the stars.

  “You might provide yourself with your own tableware, knife and fork, a teaspoon and soup spoon,” Lewrie said, recalling the pig-sty that Jessop had described of the Midshipmens’ cockpit aboard Sapphire. “And, it wouldn’t hurt to take a spare plate, soup bowl, and a pewter tankard, just in case what you’re issued gets broken or lost. It happens after a few months at sea. Something that’d serve for wine, small beer, even soup if it comes to it.”

  “As I am given to understand, Captain Lewrie, Charlie will be paid?” the Reverend hesitantly asked. “A trifling sum, I suppose.”

  “Six pounds a year, since Seventeen Ninety-Four,” Lewrie said. “Before that, Midshipmen weren’t paid at all. What they earn, now, usually is six months in arrears, so … it might do well did you send him aboard with about, oh … at least five pounds of spending money, all in small coins’d be best, for me and my clerk to hold for him. Like clean shirts, money has a way of vanishing in the Mids’ quarters.”

  “Ah, I see,” Rev. Chenery said, nodding sagely. “Five pounds in change, aha.”

  Why do I get the feelin’ I’m squeezin’ his last farthing from him? Lewrie asked himself.

  “Mids are fed the same rations as the ship’s people most of the time,” Lewrie cheerfully explained as he picked at his dinner, “salt beef, salt pork, duffs, bisquit, cheese, oatmeal, but … Lord, it do get old, so … before a voyage begins, all the Mids in the cockpit mess do a whip-round to purchase sacks of potatoes, a crate of apples, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, better cheeses, and such. I and my clerk, Mister Faulkes, hold all their coins, and dole it out for the purchases, and keep a weather eye on what they buy, so it doesn’t go for trifles, or pamperin’ luxuries.”

  “What of Charlie’s further instruction, sir, and his religious observance?” Rev. Chenery enquired. “Languages, the classics?”

  “Well, we don’t carry a Schoolmaster, or a Chaplain aboard,” Lewrie had to tell him, which made the Reverend drop his jaw. “Our Sailing Master and his Mates see to instructing the Mids on navigation, the use of charts, weather signs, and such. Anything beyond what pertains to the ship and the sea must be done on your son’s own time, so you might pack a few books in his sea-chest.

  “As for religious observance, well,” Lewrie further admitted, “we hold lay services after Sunday Divisions … hymns, prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, and perhaps I will read a short homily from a book I picked up, if the weather allows, of course.”

  “Perhaps I could supply you with some of my old sermons,” Rev. Chenery quickly offered, “with the pertinent verses noted so that your sailors could look them up and be edified.”

  Lewrie didn’t have the heart to tell him that he doubted if the ship had more than half a dozen Bibles aboard, about the same number of prayer books, and maybe only two song books; what hymns were sung were old favourites known by heart from childhood, the lustier they could be belted out the better.

  “Your offer of sermons would be most welcome, sir,” Lewrie told the man, wondering what-all he’d gotten himself into by taking the lad aboard as a replacement Midshipman. Still, young Charles Chenery appeared to be a likely sort. Time would tell.

  As to when the lad must report aboard seemed to put Rev. Chenery in another wee dither. Lewrie laid out the facts that it was up to Admiralty, and his meeting with the Chief Surveyor of the Navy on the morrow, how long that worthy would ponder Sapphire’s fate, how long the repairs would take, whether fresh orders came determining where she would go, and how soon, and whether the “dead muzzler” weather allowed her to sail. It could be a week from now, or it might be a fortnight.

  “I may be required to bide in London ’til the decision is made, which shouldn’t take all that long,” Lewrie concluded with a lift of both hands, and a puzzled shrug, “but were I you, sir, I’d make haste to kit your son out, perhaps by the end of this week? Then, when I coach back to Portsmouth, he could ride with me … sparing him the discomfort of the ‘flying coach’, and the fare.”

  I thought he’d perk up t’save the coach fare! Lewrie thought as he saw the Reverend take and release a brief breath of relief.

  They exchanged addresses and promised to inform each other at once should circumstances change. They paid their bills, Lewrie with no thought of the six-pence coin and one pence for the waiter, though the Reverend drew out his coin purse, gave a long look in, and only then laid out twelve pence with nothing for their waiter.

  * * *

  Well, that’s one problem solved, Lewrie thought as he strolled back to Admiralty, where he stood a better chance of hailing a hackney to bear him to his father’s house. Now that his official business was over, the idea of a good, long nap was very appealing.

  He had half an idea to detour up to Piccadilly and take a squint at St. Anselm’s, and the Chenery’s manse, just to see how grand it may be, for Rev. Chenery’s seeming miserliness seemed rather odd.

  Ensconced in a hackney and out of the wind, he pondered the circumstances. Hadn’t the lad said that his sisters were married to other churchmen? How many of those were there, then? If the Reverend had dowried them proper, that might mean at least an hundred pounds per annum, perhaps sixty at the very least. That might be one reason for his abstemiousness, but … the man’s church in Piccadilly, and near the up-and-coming neighbourhood of Mayfair, quite near Whitehall, St. James’s Park, Green Park, and Hyde Park bespoke wealthy and influential parishoners who paid their tithes in specie or bank notes, not in kind, chickens, or rabbits.

  Rev. Chenery’s brother was also a churchman, which meant that the family, and the daughters’ husbands, might represent an entire set of parishes, perhaps country churches where lowly Curates did all the work, and the Chenerys collected a further share of all the tithes. So, why was he such a purse-strangler, then?

  And, didn’t his clothes look a tad … rusty? Lewrie recalled.

  Black suitings worn too long went brownish-black at the knees, elbows, and cuffs, sometimes upon the coat lapels, and Chenery’s had given that impression in the weak light of the chop-house candles.

  I’ll ‘smoak’ it out, sooner or later, Lewrie told himself as he stifled a groaner of a yawn, more concerned at the moment with an image of a settee near a warm fireplace, a glass or two of brandy, and an hour or more of restorative sleep!

  CH
APTER SIX

  “Ehm … might I ask how it went at Admiralty, sir?” his man, Pettus, asked after Lewrie returned the next afternoon.

  “Main-well, I think, Pettus, main-well indeed,” Lewrie told him as he shed hat and cloak on his way to the nearest fireplace for a warm-up. “Oh, they were sceptical at first, but I b’lieve I brought ’em round, at the end. Had to boast most immodestly about all we’d done the last two years.” He pulled a wry face and shrugged as he rubbed his hands together near the fire, and not because of the cold. No, he rubbed them together as if gloating over a good performance.

  “Her bottom might need a de-fouling, but she ain’t all that bad off, yet,” he went on in a slightly louder voice as Pettus stowed his things away in the entry hall, “and, Surveyor or not, Sir Henry Peake sounded appreciative of our battle record, and seemed as if he agreed that it’d be a cryin’ shame if the crew was broken up just at the acme of their gunnery skills. They said I should stay in town for a few days, and they’d send me word, by next Monday at the latest.”

  “Why, that sounds just grand, sir!” Pettus exclaimed as he came into the first storey parlour. “Rough as it is to be going back to sea in Mid-winter, it sounds as if you will still have a ship, and a going concern.”

  “Fingers crossed, mind,” Lewrie joshed, holding up his right hand to demonstrate that it was still up to luck. “A few more days of shore liberty in London, well! They’ll be more than welcome. Do some shopping … replenish my stores? I may actually break down and buy one of those infernal bicorne hats!”

  He had come up in the Navy when large cocked hats were the norm, and it was only lately that the “Frenchified” fore-and-aft bicornes had become “all the go”; it seemed that almost every officer he’d seen in Portsmouth, and at Admiralty, now wore them.

  “Should I ring for tea, sir?” Pettus asked. “The cook says they’ve some fresh-baked scones and jam, and some lovely fresh cheese from Martini and Company in New Bond Street … where your father shops.”

  “Aye, ring … if they bother to answer,” Lewrie decided aloud.

  Their welcome in Sir Hugo’s house was rather thin, as if his father had passed the word to his household staff that his interloping son should not be made too comfortable. Lewrie reckoned that Pettus might have to go fetch the tea service, himself, if the haughty butler, Harwell, was of a mind to be un-cooperative.

  “Come t’think on it, Pettus,” Lewrie said, turning his back to the fire to warm his other side, “when you’re in the kitchens and the pantry, ye might make a list of all the places my father favours. It may be that they’re all closer, and better than my old haunts, so that I don’t have t’tramp from one end of the Strand to the other, or roam all over t’see if my old’uns are still doin’ business.”

  “That I already have, sir,” Pettus replied, looking pleased as punch to have anticipated his master’s wants and needs, “and the cook and the others have assured me that your father’s tastes are finely discriminating … and that their prices are more than reasonable.”

  “Topping!” Lewrie declared. “We’ll spend tomorrow at shoppin’, then! Make a whole day of it! Lock’s Hatters…”

  “I’ll go see about the tea and all, then, sir,” Pettus said, departing.

  Lewrie flung himself into a wing-back chair near the fire and discovered a stack of new books on a side-table, his father’s latest purchases at Lackington’s Bookstore. One title took his fancy and he almost began reading it, but rose and went to the row upon row of book cases in the office-library parlour, plucking a few off the shelves at random, and was amazed to discover that the old lecher really had cut the pages and had read them!

  There was a pounding on the entry door, and Harwell rushed from wherever he’d been hiding to answer it, admitting Sir Hugo and taking his hat, gloves, walking stick, and greatcoat for him.

  “Spitting damned sleet, again,” Sir Hugo grumbled, entering the parlour. “How’d ye do at Admiralty?”

  “I think I won the day, and will keep my ship,” Lewrie told him.

  “Fine, fine, off and gone again,” Sir Hugo dismissively said, going to the fireplace for his own warm-up. “I had tickets for the theatre tonight…”

  “Want company?” Lewrie asked, just to see how quickly his father would say “No”.

  “Know what the bloody prudes’ve done?” Sir Hugo fumed. “That damned Society for the Suppression of Vice declared that the play was too damned lewd, and forced the theatre to re-schedule something else. The bloody nerve of those people! William bloody Wilberforce, Hannah bloody More, and their whole simperin’, tea-lappin’ lot. D’ye know that the Bishop of London shut a play down in mid-performance a month ago? Right at the stroke of midnight, ’cause it was then Sunday morning, and the Sabbath must be observed proper! Just when everyone in the theatre were really enjoyin’ themselves, and the show! Bah!”

  “Well, Sunday’s always been dull as ditchwater in London,” Lewrie said, puzzled. “Everything shuts down.”

  “Oh, but now it’s a deal worse!” Sir Hugo went on in a raving pet. “At the bookstore the other day … a new edition of the entire works of Shakespeare, sonnets and all, but annotated by some joyless bastard, a Doctor Bowlder … all the good parts’ve been taken out! No cursin’, drinkin’, wenchin’, all the bawdy entendres are just gone!”

  “Why the Devil would anybody do that?” Lewrie asked, puzzled.

  “’Cause Wilberforce and More, and that Bowlder, think that the children must be exposed to the great works of English literature, the histories,” Sir Hugo gravelled, “be read aloud to in the parlour so their mushy little minds are uplifted … but never exposed to anything … disturbing! Same with fairy tales, classic poets, about everything … gutted beyond all sense! If I wasn’t too old, I would apply for a foreign posting where a man can still have a little fun!

  “You started it!” Sir Hugo accused, jabbing a stiff finger at Lewrie. “If it hadn’t been for you stealin’ those dozen slaves in Jamaica, bein’ Wilberforce’s fair-haired hero t’get his Society for the Abolition of Slavery goin’…”

  “Me?” Lewrie gawped.

  “Wasn’t for that, he’d still be a back-bencher scold!” Sir Hugo accused. “Nobody’d give the little bastard the time o’ day!”

  Sir Hugo went on, stomping round his parlour raging against all the changes over the last twenty years; church ales were now thought scandalous, bear baiting, cockfighting, dog fights, goose pulls, and even Maypole dancing, Morris dancing, had been slowly suppressed by an host of reformist societies … why, it’d be steeplechasing and fox-hunting, next!

  “Well, you have little t’worry about,” Lewrie pointed out once his father began to run down like a cheap pocket watch. “I see that you have just about ev’ry scandalous book here, arranged alphabetically and by author. Pornographic prints here…”

  “Preservin’ ’em for future generations, once this ridiculous shit’s run its course,” Sir Hugo declared, striving for “nobility of purpose”.

  Lewrie had to fling himself into his chair and have himself a good, long cackle over that. Sir Hugo fumed some more, gnashed what passed for a full set of teeth, stamped his foot, and announced that he’d see Lewrie at supper, once he’d come to his bloody senses.

  “Yours, or mine?” Lewrie shot at his departing back but got no response beyond what he might have deemed a growl. “You old scandal,” he added, under his breath.

  At least the “old scandal” had hurled aside the day’s copy of The Times in his pet, leaving Lewrie something to read whilst savouring his tea and scones, with a pot of strawberry jam. There were a few advertisements for the theatres that he found tempting, a notice for a symphony by some Italian something-or-other, a subscription ball which he considered for a moment, then rejected after recalling just how insufferably crowded they usually were, and how “odiferous” were the attendees.

  After exhausting the newspaper, Lewrie rose and went to the front windows to check the weather, and, a
t the sight of the accumulation of fresh snow and sleet, decided that he would stay in and wait for the morrow to do his rounds. He yawned in boredom … until he discovered an untidy pile of caricatures and satiric prints, hand-coloured at a shilling apiece, by Gillray, Isaac Cruikshank, Rowlandson, and others.

  “Oh, what fun!” he muttered as he sifted through them. “They’re as good as a newspaper any day!”

  Everything and everyone was mocked and skewered, and the politics of the nation, and the peccadilloes of the rich and titled, were laid bare, along with the scandals, a great many of the prints sexual in nature, contrived to be risible.

  The old fart must’ve spent a bundle on ’em all, Lewrie thought, even discovering some older Hogarths near the bottom of the pile. On the backs or at the bottoms, he noted that they mostly had come from S. W. Fores in Piccadilly, Hannah Humphrey’s in New Bond Street, William Holland’s in Oxford Street, James Brotherton’s in New Bond Street, and Thomas Cornell’s Picture Gallery in Bruton Street, which was just off New Bond, all conveniently close by.

  Hmm, now there’s a distraction for tomorrow, he told himself, expanding his day of shopping with a few hours of gawking. With any luck, there’d be coffee or tea available, too!

  Assuming he got through supper with his father, of course.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Huzzah!” Lewrie shouted at the top of his lungs once he’d read the letter from Admiralty, thrusting it aloft in triumph. “Whoo, and about damned time!” He sprang to his feet from the breakfast table, upsetting his chair.

  “One’d suppose you’ve a reason to be boorish,” Sir Hugo laconically said in the midst of buttering his toast. “And too bloody loud, to boot.”

  “Sapphire’s to stay in commission!” Lewrie hooted, “and I still have a ship! They say…” Lewrie quickly re-read the letter to find the pertinent sentence, “they say that orders for her continued service will be forthcoming. I must get back to Portsmouth with the good news, at once.”